Norfolk & Norwich Millennium tops list of most popular UK libraries – Guardian. “Top 20 list offers bright spot in survey that reveals declining services, book stocks and staffing levels” … “In a sector beset by austerity-driven library closures, the Norfolk library service has “worked very hard to respond to the needs of library users and to stay relevant”, head of libraries Jennifer Holland said. “Part of it is that we keep very well maintained book stocks, and listen to what people like to read, as well as embedding the library service at the heart of delivering council objectives on things like education and employment.”

Rural impact of library changes research– Arts Council England. “The objectives of this project are to better understand, add to existing knowledge, and provide learning to local communities and authorities on: * the issues, challenges and opportunities for rural areas arising from changes to library services * good practice and shared learning on how to shape library services in rural areas to meet local need (including alternative models of delivery) * the possible future role of statutory and non-statutory libraries in rural areas”

“We have carefully selected a sample of rural areas that broadly represents different types of rural geography and the main factors that may affect library usage and management which could usefully address the research objectives. The aim is to identify good practice and possibly more challenging issues in order to clarify what models might best work in particular types of rural areas and circumstances. The details of discussions in each area will necessarily remain confidential to encourage free exchange of views within discussion groups, but the learning generated across the eight places will be brought together and shared through the final report. The eight areas taking part in this research are Buckinghamshire, Cumbria, Devon, North Yorkshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Wakefield and Warwickshire.”

“We’re fighting a battle, you and I, every day, a lot of little guerilla skirmishes in the underground war to preserve the imagination.”

International news

How Americans value public libraries in their communities– Pew Internet (USA). “Americans strongly value the role of public libraries in their communities, both for providing access to materials and resources and for promoting literacy and improving the overall quality of life. Most Americans say they have only had positive experiences at public libraries, and value a range of library resources and services.” [Major research by Pew Internet continues to demonstrate not only the importance of public libraries but also the importance of conducting such research, perhaps more lacking in the UK – Ed.]

“Some 90% of Americans ages 16 and older said that the closing of their local public library would have an impact on their community, with 63% saying it would have a “major” impact.”

UK news by authority

“To accompany Birmingham’s impressive new city centre library comes a new website at a staggering cost of £1.2m – and that’s before annual running costs. According to figures released under freedom of information, the whopping design, licensing and content creation price, plus a huge £190,000-a-year support charge, will be paid to Capita’s ghastly Service Birmingham (Eyes passim), which “procured the library website on behalf of the city council”. Capita previously built the city council’s website, which came in two years late and four times its original budget — so it was clearly the obvious choice for the job!

One web designing told the Eye that an ordinary web design firm could probably have done the whole job for around £150,000, including getting it to work on all phones and mobile devices, which it currently doesn’t, even though that was included in the contract specification. Still, at least the site is “available 24 hours a day” — which was also specified, one would hope unnecessarily.

Many large councils’ entire websites cost less than half what Birmingham is paying for its library site. As for running costs, recent figures for the London borough of Bexley, which provides the same Overdrive e-lending service as Birmingham, estimate that running the Bex-L site costs £6,000 a year in staff time.

How else could Birmingham have spent £1.2m? The money would certainly be a help to the city’s 39 branch libraries, many of which are under threat as the service review proposes to switch to volunteer and community-run libraries in “non-priority literacy areas and housebound and mobile services”.” Birmingham – Library News – Private Eye, Issue 1355 (p.28)

Carillion (Croydon/Ealing/Hounslow/Harrow) – The law of the building site; Carillion and public libraries – Stop the privatisation of public libraries. “f a recent comment posted on my site is to be believed, and I have no reason to doubt it, then it looks as if Carillion have tried to introduce the law of the building site into public libraries” …” This shocking news about Harrow fits in with the other bits and pieces I’ve heard from Ealing and Croydon where staff are being threatened with redundancies and ‘restructuring’, many more will flee with ER/VR packages if they can get them”

“Carillion is currently in consultation with employees and their recognised Trade Unions regarding the operation of the library services. It would be wrong to comment on these discussion but Carillion is committed to providing a high quality and sustainable library service for the benefit of the communities these libraries service.” Response from Carillion to PLN query about rumours of job losses.

“20 Hours remaining for you to become involved in this exciting project linking a volunteer run library in New Cross with public art experts Artmongers. With the giant light-box we will create, you would be able to make art as part of a group, suggest themes, nominate artists – all of which will give much needed creative energy to this truly courageous experiment.” See this webpage – Lewisham

North Yorkshire – £100k boost for library art scheme – Gazette and Herald. “As part of the three-year Creative Residences Programme, North Yorkshire County Council’s library services will see 24 artists based in eight libraries across the area as they work with members of the community on various projects.”

Northamptonshire – Ruth named a literacy hero – Northants Telegraph. “The youth programme co-ordinator for Northamptonshire County County’s library service has been named a Literacy Hero. Literacy Heroes is a new initiative by the National Literacy Trust in celebration of their 20th year of working to improve literacy skills. Launched earlier this year, the National Literacy Trust was looking for people who have overcome problems with reading and writing, or helped inspire other people to improve their literacy skills.”

“Her work has included setting up creative writing groups, running workshops with children and young people in schools and libraries to engage them with literacy and creating the young adult arts groups model, where libraries recruit volunteers with an arts background to run regular groups for young people.”

This entry was posted by Ian Anstice on December 11, 2013 at 11:27 pm, and is filed under Uncategorized. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There are currently 3850 libraries in the UK (CIPFA figures for 2015/16). There were 4023 in 2013/14, 4482 in 2009/10 and 4622 in 2003/4.
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The complete list is on "Tally by Local Authority" page as are other changes to budgets such as cuts to hours, bookfund and staffing. CIpfa have calculated that 121 service points lost in 2015/16, 106 service points were lost in 2014/15, 49 were lost in 2013/14, 74 were lost in 2012/13, 201 in 2011/12, 33 in 2010/11.
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For a list of new and refurbished buildings see this page,

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I would also like to add at this point my thanks to Shirley Burnham for her frequent emails with relevant public libraries news which I then use as a a large part of the material for this site.

Warren O'Donoghue of Rabbitdigital Design has been wonderful in designing and creating this website, maintaining it and basically being there for the one hundred and one web problems that seem to surface all the time.